


spacesuits for everyone

by sleeplessandcynical



Series: sinners and their repentances [1]
Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, But it does have, Demonic Possession, Friends to Lovers, Hair-pulling, Hoodoo, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I legit wrote cis m/m slash wat, It's not even kinky (yet?), M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Not Kayfabe Compliant, Panic Attacks, Praise Kink, Self-Doubt, Switching, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, crying during sex in a good way, it just seemed appropriate, please don't let me fuck this up, so fucking many stupid movie references, these nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-06 15:05:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12213309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplessandcynical/pseuds/sleeplessandcynical
Summary: Finn and Seth are both struggling with demons, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do it together.soundtrack:Atom and His Package – Redefining Music – “Before My Friends Do”Atom and His Package - Attention! Blah Blah Blah - "For Aliza, Whenever She May Sleep"





	1. spacesuits for everyone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [never_shuts_up](https://archiveofourown.org/users/never_shuts_up/gifts).



> This is absolutely nothing like what I anticipated, not gonna lie. I've never written anything like this before in terms of the pairing, etc., let alone in 24 hours, but I had SO MUCH FUCKING FUN doing it that it just blew up way beyond anything I expected. I hope y'all like it as much as I loved writing it. 
> 
> and happy birthday, @never_shuts_up!!

_this is not nostalgia_  
_this is not the past_  
_and if it's gonna end external like a stupid car crash_  
_regardless of my body_  
_regardless of my weight_  
_wouldn't it be nice if i could say_  
_'i won't change and you won't change';_  
_if we could both agree to stay the same,_  
_well then, for once in this life i would not complain_  
_if we could both agree to stay the same_

 

* * *

 

“We’ll probably have you do some run-ins, maybe take a drive-by or two. The crutches are a nice touch – it’ll make people wonder whether to feel bad for you or keep up the heat.”

A nice touch. For _fuck’s_ sake. Seth has lost track of the surgeries and rehab sessions at this point, but hey, at least he’s got a useful accessory for some goddamn prop comedy.

Seth hates these meetings almost as much as he hates these storylines. He feels like Hunter’s broken toy, hidden away in the bottom corner of the chest. Pull him out every now and again, sigh mournfully at the fact that he’s still useless, and put him back in the dark.  _Just throw me away already, asshole. Everybody else already has._

But he knows. He knows, as surely as he knows his heart’s beating way too fast, eyes too dry. He’s an example to everyone in the building, on the roster, across the universe. Drag the injured show pony out, let him limp around, beat him down, put him away wet, same time next week.

Hunter keeps goddamn talking, and Seth thinks,  _I am going to gouge my own eyes out if you don’t shut the fuck up._ He thinks it as hard as he possibly can, as though he can will himself into telepathy. And who knows? Maybe he’s being heard all along. Maybe this is some sort of test. A quick scan of H’s desk reveals nothing adequate for eye-stabbing, but maybe that’s an aspect of said tribulation – how well can a guy MacGyver a grapefruit spoon out of paper clips? Surely, this is how champions are made.

The office reeks like plastic and stale body odor. Seth’s jaw hurts from clenching his teeth, and he’s counted the chips in the corners of the paint roughly four thousand times. A trickle of sweat meanders down the back of his neck, irritatingly lazy, and he fights back the urge to slap it away.

He peeks out the window to the parking lot, and barely hides an audible sigh of relief. His ride’s here, and early.

Finn parks his car, gets out, and squints up to the conference room. It doesn’t take much to read Seth’s body language; he’s stiff, hunched, taking short and shallow breaths. It looks painful, because it probably is. On impulse, he reaches into the backseat for his tablet, brings up a blank screen, and starts scribbling.

Seth sees the movement out of the corner of his eye, and when Trips continues droning on, he takes the opportunity to glance back over. If Finn can manage to look busy, or harried, or  _something,_ maybe he can use the excuse to – 

Finn is holding the iPad above his head, like a somehow-even-cuter John Cusak _,_ but the message is about ten years younger than that, and accompanied by one of those blindingly bright smiles:

**WANT ME TO KILL THEM?**

Seth has to actually hold his breath to keep from spewing laughter all over his boss, and locks his stare back forward with everything he’s got in him. It helps to know that Finn would probably do it if he so much as nodded, and while a bloodbath would be an almost preferential end to this bureaucratic purgatory, he’s not so sure either of them would do particularly well in jail, even together.

* * *

Finn is…  _gentle_  is a strange word,  _soft_  a strange concept for a guy with approximately sixteen abs, but it’s the best one Seth can come up with. He’s got edges, just like Seth, and they’re well-defined in every sense of the term, but while Seth imagines himself as razor wire – thorough and vicious and bloody if you grab on too tight but frustratingly vulnerable to being picked apart from the inside out – Finn is a goddamn white picket fence that smells like apple pie, or whatever it is that Irish people come home to. Shepherd’s pie? Something like that.

Seth remembers watching tape from Japan in complete shock, tense and jittery at what unfolded in front of his eyes. Even right-now-Finn described back-then-Finn as “a right bastard.” He spat on people, threw things at the audience, pitched fits, fought  _everybody_ including his partners and underlings, and seemed to exist entirely in an unrecognizable tornado of filth and fury.

That, Seth later discovered, was not entirely his doing. In fact, finding out his best friend was  _literally_  a demon actually makes more sense than it should. Seth always says he doesn’t believe in that shit, but the first time Finn takes a botch in front of him, back when they barely knew each other and long before  _that_ conversation, is pretty fucking convincing. When he rolls back to his feet, his entire bearing changes, shoulders weaving in a deliberate serpentine, and Seth is absolutely certain he smells smoke. It’s like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room in preparation for a giant, fearful scream, and a terrified and very green Chad Gable actually runs out of the room as the normally-bubbly Irishman stalks him around the corner of the practice ring.

For some completely inexplicable reason, Seth steps in the middle, even as an involuntary shiver drags its fingers up his spine. He’d just stopped by to pick up some shit he’d forgotten the day before, and yet here he is, carefully putting his hand on the new guy’s shoulder. In immediate hindsight, as Finn whips around to pick Seth apart with those uncannily dark eyes, it was absolutely stupid, but then something  _slides_ and  _clicks_ and Finn is Finn again, pupils back where they belonged.

“You okay, buddy?” Seth finds himself asking, internally rolling his eyes at his choice of childlike phrasing.

Finn doesn’t seem to notice. “Just getting a rise out of yer man, Champ. What is he, eight?”

“Bullshit. Get it together,” Seth spits, and regrets it.  _You’ve got no business calling somebody out for not being what they seem, genius._  

“Yeah? That your official advice?”

Seth huffs, and walks away.  

His phone goes off on the drive home, but he doesn't check it until he's back inside. One message from Bayley, saying that the new guy asked for his info so that he could apologize. He thinks about it, replies in the affirmative, and about ten minutes later, gets a second message, this one from a number he doesn’t know.

_Sorry you had to see that. Getting it under control has been a real beast._

Seth saves the number and writes and rewrites his response about nine times before finally settling on  _No problem. Hope you apologized to Gable first, though. He looked like a ghost._

 **Finn** : _Definitely not a ghost, I swear! Right as you left. He threatened to make me eat deep-fried cheese? Is that a real thing?_

Ahh, fellow Midwesterners. This time, he texts back without a single revision.  _Only when you’re bad._

They’re both laughing on their respective ends of the line.

Weeks go by, but the conversation never stops, and while it’s mostly surface-level “How was your day?,” "How do you think Gable gets his hair so shiny?," "If I do Bayley's entrance, then I dare you to do Charlotte's," it’s a surface that Seth doesn’t normally show. Seth finds himself telling the truth – that some days are better than anything he could have imagined, but some days are bad, and sometimes he’s tired and everything hurts and he wants to crawl back to Iowa and eat deep-fried cheese and never get out of bed again. 

He  _likes_  Finn, which is what makes this whole honesty thing extra-weird. He desperately wants to impress him, too, because he knows that Finn of all people is least likely to give a single fuck about politics and championships and inner circles; he’s been there, he’s done that, on a global scale, and he glides through it all with an enviably graceful ease. He would see through Seth’s happy horseshit in an instant, and they both know it. He loves it when Seth tells him the truth and, in time, Seth starts to love doing it. Like maybe he's okay, good enough as he actually is.

Finn tells the truth, too; winding stories replete with mischief and the occasional odd silence. That’s when Seth goes home one night, gets on YouTube, and sees the tape. That’s when his stomach drops out, and he puts the instant question away at the bottom of it for as long as he possibly can. Which turns out to be maybe a couple of months.

Finn has this odd affinity for  _watching._ It reminds Seth of Hawkeye; he’ll show up, shaking hands and kissing babies, and then he’ll just  _go,_ and eventually Seth will find him on a catwalk or in the nosebleed seats or on the fire escape, hands folded just-so in his lap, eyes half-focused with infinite patience on some faraway nebulous target. 

So it’s no big surprise when he can’t find Finn that afternoon in Brooklyn, but after a few minutes of searching, his phone buzzes and there’s a picture of Finn’s face. Well, half of it – thank god for small favors, because he can barely handle the full-watt smile – looking blissful and, of all things, green.

_Are you on the fucking roof?!_

**Finn** : _Get your arse up here! We need to talk._

There’s a period at the end of that sentence, which would have been scary enough on its own. Fuck. Seth barely makes it down the hall to the family bathroom before he dry-heaves, anxiety and apprehension and overthinking churning into a ghastly, bile-soaked maelstrom. His pulse is pounding in his head and every beat comes with a new racing brainwave.  _You fucked up. He hates your guts. You’re a whiny, useless little weasel. Go hide somewhere. You don’t even belong here. You came here for him and you don’t deserve it. He found you out._

He doesn’t know how much time has passed before his phone goes off again.

 **Finn** : _You alright? Just realized how fucked that last one sounded. I'm so sorry. Little wound-up_

It still takes several minutes of deep breaths before he can begin to respond, and when he does, he tells the truth.

_Yeah. I panicked. I’m sorry_

**Finn** :  _You don’t need to be. You also don’t need to come up here just to hear me puke my feelings_

But Seth kinda  _does_  need to do that, and when he finally locates the rooftop door through a series of ladders, he’s glad he did; there’s a gorgeous breeze and it’s a perfect counterpoint to the stiff, air-conditioned fluorescent lighting a few floors below.

“Hey there!” Finn waves him over, and Seth sits down.

“What’s up?” Seth is proud of how normal he sounds and, in fact, is starting to feel. His face and beard are still a little damp from the sink, but it's actually kinda nice in the sun.

Finn scratches his forehead, carefully, like his skin hurts, or like he could pick a thought directly out of his brain if he tried just right. It seems that, for once, he doesn’t know what to say. And, of course, Seth is absolutely terrible at awkward silences, so he forges ahead. “You nervous about tonight?”

“You could say that.” Finn’s signature grin is missing a little of its potency. “Trying to keep 'em on a leash is something else.”

“Who, Owens? Yeah, he’s a tough son of a bi–“

“That’s not what I mean. And I think you know it. You probably saw it before anybody else did.”

Seth swallows. “Is that… Are you for fucking real?”

Finn laughs, and it’s absolutely breathtaking. “You’ve seen the tapes, haven’t ya?”

“So what? Don’t all friends google each other?”

“That little shite was the prince. This” – he lays a hand over his heart, his pupils blow up, and Seth  _swears_ if he didn’t know any better, he could hear Finn’s pulse shaking every individual stone and shingle and blade of grass in a ten-foot radius – “This is the King.”

 _Well that’s terrifying_ , Seth thinks. There’s no god, therefore there can be no devil, but apparently that hasn’t prevented the universe presenting him with a goddamn motherfucking demon on the roof of the Barclays Center. It’s not precisely the conversation he was afraid of, but then again, preparing for this sort of revelation isn’t exactly in the handbook.

“So you’re an actual demon,” he finally says, and when he leans back on his hands, he realizes the sod is faintly singed. “Or your… roommate is a demon?” He taps the side of his head.

“Something like that.” Finn laughs again, but it's a little less uplifting, a little more bitter. “Fucker owes me rent, at least. Told the bosses they’d have to pay us both.” He’s flip in a way that he clearly hopes is covering his nerves. His days of no control aren’t that far behind him, though, and while careful planning, close borders, and occasional playdates seem to keep the King happy, Finn remembers quite keenly what it’s like to be lost inside his own body, screaming to get out, waking up bloody with no recollection of how or why, just that he was hungry, and angry, and twisted-up.

Seth tilts his head and fixes those dark eyes on his face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m the one who should be asking  _you_  that, ya know,” Finn grumbles.

“Maybe, but you’re, um. Smoking.”

Finn runs his hands through his hair and sure enough, they come away reeking faintly of sulfur. “Jaysus. Good thing we’re outside.”

“Yup.” Seth pops the P, and for some reason  _that’s_ the crack in the dam that sets them both to giggling for far longer than a couple of grown men would usually admit. In the middle of it, Finn drops his head on Seth’s shoulder, and when Seth takes the invitation to bury his face in Finn’s hair, he smells like shampoo and sunshine again.

They’re both goners, washed away in the relief that the other knows and understands, and when they have these moments, which are increasingly close together, the end result is something of a temporary exorcism. Everyone feels lighter, somehow.  

But Seth keeps having this weird sensation of envy – it’s a fucking demon, but at least it has _boundaries_  – and he’s constantly poking at his own nervous open wounds.  _Why don’t you fuck off or get thee behind me or whatever? Can I have a problem that’s solvable with holy water for once?_ snaps like a rubber band into  _Are you really bitching that feeling like you left the stove on 24/7 is worse than having to keep Beelzebub’s stepson under wraps? No wonder nobody likes you_ and back and forth again. 

Finn wishes Seth understood that what control he possesses comes from being, well, possessed. Keeping a stranglehold on an entirely separate being that’s lampreyed itself to his actual soul is a real pain in the arse, not something that can be handled  _normally_ , per se, but it also doesn’t feel nearly as much like a betrayal of his mind, by his mind. Jokes aside, it really is quite a bit like having an annoying flatmate, but at least they both have jobs to do, whereas Seth’s brain has decided that its job is making Seth feel like shit all the time.

But together? That’s something else. There’s remarkable respite in struggling together, in getting better together, even if sometimes it keeps them up at night reading old text messages over and over –  _You’re doing fine. You’re doing great. I’m proud of you._  – and wishing that one day they could be in the same fucking  _place,_ literally or metaphorically, or that Seth could at least  _perceive_ himself as being at the same spot on the curve. Even recovery becomes a contest, because that’s what he does. He stacks the work up, lets it shove him back down, lets the shaking that comes from sleeplessness and muscle failure feel better than the tremble of  _you’re alone and you’re always gonna be alone._

Seth starts to realize he’s losing it when he fucks his knee up in, of course, Dublin. Once all the tests are done, he hides out in his hotel room, keeps his phone turned completely off, and ignores any and all comers. But two days in, he hears a familiar, if muffled, voice.

“Tell me to fuck off and I won’t bother you, promise,” Finn says through the door. “But everyone wants to make sure you’re alive.”

“I’m not dead,” Seth grouses.  _Yet,_ his brain cheerfully appends. “I’m just… not ready.”

He waits for another knock, an argument, maybe a threat to call security. Instead, there’s a calm silence, and when it’s passed, Finn says, “Can I check on you tomorrow, then?”

Seth blurts out, “Would you really go away if I told you to?”

“Absolutely.” Finn sounds strangely reassured. “Always.”

“Then I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

There’s a final flat sound on the door, like Finn’s just set his hand on it. “Sweet dreams.” Footsteps heading away.

That night, Seth actually showers for the first time since he got hurt, washes his hair twice, and turns on his phone afterwards. He even eats. There’s about a million messages, but only two are from Finn, sent shortly after the show ended.

 **Finn:**   _You alright?_

 **Finn:**   _I mean, I’m a fucking dope. I know you’re not alright. I don’t know if you’ll see this, but I’m gonna pop by in a day or two if nobody’s heard anything. Don’t want to bother. Do want to see if you’re okay._

Seth’s not okay.

Finn comes back the next day, as promised, and this time Seth actually opens the door. His room smells like the underneath of a teenage boy's bed, the blankets are tossed everywhere, and he's almost too tired to be mortified. Almost. Finn doesn't give a single fuck - he's brought flowers, and tells Seth that if he wants, they can go to the gardens with his family; they were on their way as it was. 

"Da's waiting in the car," he explains patiently.

Seth forgot that Finn doesn't drive, and laughs for the first time in three days. "I... maybe next time."

"Oh, so next time you blow your knee out a half-hour from home,  _then_ you'll meet my parents?" That grin is infectious, and Seth can't help but mirror it even as his aching face reminds his aching brain that he shouldn't have anything to smile about in the first place. 

The next several months are a blur of surgeries and rehab centers and aggravations and more rehab and he’s starting to think maybe he should fuck off and pick a less hazardous career. Like exorcist. Or shark trainer. But he goes to PT, and he takes his vitamins, and he (mostly) stays off the internet and away from the usual gossip channels, and he does all the stupid shit everyone suggests, and finally,  _finally,_ he’s cleared again. Finn’s been hinting at something for weeks, but he’s damned good at keeping secrets, and when he shows up to Raw, Seth actually gets woozy and has to hang onto his wrist before his knees go out in an entirely different way than before.

Everything is flying and blurring together and it seems like time never stands still or even slows to a reasonable pace. A few months later, they’re back in Brooklyn, back on the roof as everything goes apeshit beneath them. Tables everywhere, someone’s dressed like James Bond at a Mafia wedding, a couple of idiots keep bursting into song, there’s a disproportionate number of gingers and goatees  _and_ Club members on the card, and Finn and Seth are scheduled to beat each other up in front of something like seventeen thousand sweaty representatives of the tri-state area for the privilege of being the very first Universal Champion. Secretly, neither of them really gives that much of a shit who wins, but damned if they’re not going to put on a barn-burner in the process.

Seth puts his head on Finn’s shoulder this time, and jumps a little as an eighteen-wheeler lays on the horn at a bike messenger on the street below. “You’re alright,” Finn says, but wraps his arm around Seth’s shoulders anyway. Eventually, they have to go back inside – all that paint and grease ain’t putting _itself_ on – and as they part in the hallway, Seth squeezes Finn’s hand, carrying that warmth with him as far as the entrance ramp.

He almost smiles as Finn creeps out through a haze of fog, knowing that somewhere underneath, his best friend is holding the reins. It’s still uncanny, the way Finn’s eyes slide in and out, the way he crumples in the corner before snapping to full attention as the crowd screams, the way he stalks Seth around the room in frightening silence, and Seth finds himself repeating over and over again _it’s Finn it’s Finn it’s Finn._ His control is evident; he still moves like Finn, quick and graceful, hard-hitting and exacting in every respect.

When Finn takes the bump, it’s crooked and so, _so_ wrong. Seth knows it’s bad, immediately, and everything in him is screaming at the top of its lungs. Finn’s eyes flash for a second, and they both know the pain leaves him barely able to keep himself in line. Even still, Seth wants to go to him,  _run_ to him, physically carry him away from all this. Fuck the title. Fuck the crowd. Fuck the powers that be. But he panics. He freezes. He hangs onto the apron for all he’s worth.

When he finds an excuse to check on Finn, to cover their faces with his hair and whisper, something _else_ snarls back in a venomous undertone. _It’s your fucking fault, child. You broke him. Now you’ve just got me. Heh._

“Fuck you,” Seth grits out under his breath, even as he’s sorely tempted to make this his second year in a row puking at Barclays. He gives Finn, and not the fucking demon, everything he’s got, running on instinct and fumes, praying in his own careful way that maybe the familiarity of touch, of movement will be enough to get his best friend back. And it almost works. Almost. They’re connected here and there; sometimes Finn’s skin gets warmer, sometimes his eyes start to turn more blue, sometimes that freaky fucking eye on his back looks a lot more like paint than something that slithers underneath his skin, but the longer it goes on, the more Seth realizes there’s no chance for either of them to beat their way out of this one. He barely remembers the end of the match, and when he finally catches up with himself, he _does_ end up hiding out in the bathroom until everyone else fucks off, but at least this time he sticks to crouching against the wall remembering how to breathe again.

Injured Finn is literally the worst thing Seth’s ever seen. Even as he’s being shipped off to recovery, the hint of despondency in his eyes is glitteringly obvious to everyone who knows him, and when they say goodbye, they don’t actually _say_ anything. There’s just a glimpse, and a touch, and then Finn is gone.

Seth doesn’t even make it into the fall proper before he fucks his ribs up. He grinds his teeth and carries on, but he’s tired, and overworked, and did he mention tired, and in the blink of an eye he’s on the ground cussing at his knee for its betrayal.  

The first day they both hobble into the rehab center at the same time, they exchange one long look and then start laughing so hard that Seth crumples onto the tile and the staff haul ass over, thinking he’s re-injured something. 

“At long last, some quality time," Finn wheezes.

But it is, actually. If the last year or so was getting to know Finn from mostly words, wonderful words on a screen, these next couple of weeks or months are getting to be  _near_ Finn, where no one is looking and therefore no pressure on Seth to have the right answers to questions he wasn't sure even existed. But it's also  _being near Finn_ , so that kinda kills the "no pressure" vibe. Yikes. 

One day, Finn can't stop giggling at a capybara video and then gets Seth to watch it with him four more times. One day, Seth holds out an earbud and says, "Check this out." One day, Finn offers him a ride home with his shiny new license. The next thing either of them knows, they're curled up like kittens pretty much 24/7.

Finn carries the groceries and Seth washes Finn's hair in the kitchen sink but it doesn't go any further, it never goes any further; not when Seth falls asleep on Finn's lap in the middle of  _Powerpuff Girls_ with his glasses all askew across his face, or when Finn plays pillow tetris with Seth for hours trying to prop everything up just right (because of course they have a sleepover, it's way easier than Finn driving Seth back to his apartment and then driving home again when it's late) or that time they wake up and realize they're holding hands like a couple of total fucking dorks. 

It doesn't go any further until one day they're engrossed in a  _very_ serious game of Mario Kart - Finn has devised an elaborate scheme for not using his bad arm by propping his controller on Seth's thigh and refusing to admit defeat - and after Finn actually beats Seth by yelling "Stay on target!" for the last two laps and perilously knocking both of them around, Seth turns, cups Finn's face in both hands, and offers up the ghost of a kiss. He's holding his own face almost comically far away so that Finn can make it stop and tell him this was a very bad idea if, if, if that's what he thinks. So he closes his eyes, lashes brushing the lenses of his glasses, and listens. But Finn doesn't say that. He doesn't say anything. He just smiles - Seth can feel teeth on his lip, just barely - and kisses Seth  _back,_ sickeningly gentle, piecing Seth's hair away with careful fingers. And for a long time, this is it - the soft contact of mouths and hands, legs brushing, heat on skin on more skin on more skin, questions asked with and without words. 

Seth realizes he hasn't been nervous in, like,  _minutes._ Finn realizes he actually feels the whole occupied length of his body, unwelcome guest shoved so far to the background that its very image begins to pixelate like dropped ice. 

They both realize in moderate horror that neither of them actually knows what to  _do_ now _;_ the complementary nature of their battle scars, while adorably Instagram-friendly, is the exact opposite of conducive to extracurriculars. Seth's not doing much moving at all, and while Finn's injuries are less restrictive, Seth has also seen the pain in his eyes when he pushes himself. Which he does, in all things. 

But now he's actually pulling back, leaning against the couch arm with a crooked smile, and he trails his good arm down Seth's body, tracing the underside of his thickening cock through his shorts. That same hand bridges their thighs together. That same hand makes a slow crawl up Finn's own leg, with a very clear destination. 

Seth swallows, and blinks hard. He's speechless, dry-mouthed, and without a chance in hell. He does a quick mental inventory, decides everything seems to feel pretty good considering the circumstances, and ducks down awkwardly to drop his head on Finn's thigh. When he makes contact, his eyes involuntarily flutter closed, and Finn tenses underneath. 

Those graceful fingers are now traipsing through Seth's hair again and he's almost half-asleep before he hears himself mumble, "What is this?"

Finn glances down. "What's what?"

"Are we fucking? Are we IOUing to fuck on another occasion? Is this a 'that was nice but nah'?"

Finn laughs. "You're the one with your face in my lap, I'd say it oughta be a mutual decision." 

"Fair enough. On three?" Seth sits up after a few off-kilter attempts, and tries to tuck his hair back, nearly knocking his glasses off in the process.

"What, like fuckin' Rock Paper Scissors?" Finn is completely baffled, but Seth's already at two-and-a-half and he's had no chance to prepare a counter so he just gives Seth the best look he can summon, the best look he's ever given in the whole of his life, a look that has to absolutely scream the most appealing twist of innocence and unfettered hedonism.

Seth just scrunches up his nose and asks, "Does that... Are you okay?" 

Finn gives up on subtlety entirely. "Quite. I'd be even better if you were touching your dick." 

Seth turns about four or five shades of pink, and Finn determines that's good news and also _possibly_ his favorite thing in the entire world. 

"Is that... Is that it?" Seth has a flash of caution, wariness. He doesn't like to think about why. 

"Well, for me, at any rate. I don't know what you're into, but I'm more than content to watch you put on a show. And maybe returning the favor, if you don't mind." He winks. 

Seth feels dizzy. This can't be happening. Not to him. Not right now, when he looks like shit and he's broken and scruffy and dressed like every day is laundry day with his holey t-shirt and his stupid fucking nerd specs. But sure enough, Finn drops a kiss on his forehead, a tingling shock of affection, and then waits, just _waits_ , for Seth to turn his face up again. 

When he does, Finn murmurs, "What do you say, sweetheart?"

Seth kisses him, shaking so hard he's sure his teeth must be rattling, and closes his eyes, drawing a hand in to free his cock from his shorts. When he opens them again, he realizes Finn's taken his glasses off and is hooking them carefully in the front of his own shirt before divesting Seth of his. 

Finn is  _very_  appreciative, and makes sure Seth knows it, dropping layers of kisses and compliments all over his face and neck. "You look  _gorgeous_  like this. You look gorgeous all the time." 

"Yeah?" Seth is hopeful. He's a little bit terrified. He's so turned-on that when he actually gets a grip on himself, he has to stop dead and breathe out, calm back down. 

"Absolutely," Finn breathes, voice deeper and accent thicker, and Seth almost loses it again with that one word and the half-dozen slow strokes that follow. He continues, "You bring me back sometimes, you know that? When it's all dark and I want to lie down in it forever, I think about reaching out for you and it all fucks right off." 

 _Is kindness a kink?,_ Seth thinks, in a distant haze.  _It fuckin' better be. It is now._

"Are you proud of me?" he finds himself asking, suddenly, embarrassed by how emotional he's getting with his hand on his dick.

Finn just smiles with a pop so bright it's like every bulb in the house blew out at once, and leans in for a very thorough kiss. "Always. Every day.”

It's too much, all the skin and the heat and the way the words shoot pins-and-needles through him and Seth comes all over his fingers with a gasp that bears a very striking resemblance to a whimper but most assuredly is not. 

Finn ducks down, asks with his eyes, and cleans up Seth's fingers with his tongue, arching over him as best he can. In the process, he accidentally bumps his very hard cock against Seth's other hand. It really is an accident, at least until Seth reaches over and pulls Finn upright onto his lap, bracing Finn's back against the couch arm. 

Finn gives him a real daredevil of a glance, stopped dead in its tracks when Seth reaches between his legs. He's teasing now, just toying his faintly sticky fingers along Finn's waistband. Finn wraps his good arm around Seth's neck and kisses the air right out of his lungs. When Seth takes over the hold with his own arms, Finn's hand begins its journey down, and Seth feels every muscle tense. He rubs circles into Finn's back, practically purring with contentment, and kisses the hollow of his throat, groaning as he feels Finn start to move in earnest. He's writhing, graceful, an absolute wonder, flushed from chest to cheeks, fucking up into the lightest touches. 

He's just so _sensitive_ , and all Seth can think about is how great it would be to make Finn come over, and over, and over until he's twitching and overstimulated. So he says so, dragging the syllables out lasciviously. Then Seth kisses his collarbone with more teeth then tongue and Finn lets out an absolutely  _terrible_ sound that Seth is fully prepared to treasure for the rest of his life. 

For a long time, neither one can nor wants to speak. Or move. But Seth's leg is stiff and falling asleep, and Finn is still sticky. So it goes.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do when one of us goes back," Seth admits when they finally come back down, clean back up, tuck themselves carefully in bed. It seems  _much_ sillier out loud than it did careening around in his head, and that's reassuring. "It'll be way too quiet."

“I mean, you could always get yourself a demon.”

“I thought I already did!”

“Pfft. Get yer own, I mean.”

“I don’t know about that. All the Oxi-Clean in the world isn’t enough to get the sulfur out of  _two_ people’s laundry.”

Finn laughs, and kisses Seth's shoulder.

 

_take a break, lay down  
take a breath, way down_

_this is the up and down_  
_this is the in and out_  
_this is the quiet and loud_  
_this is the way, it’s the way_  
_we pack it up and ship around_

 

* * *

 

"I think we made out in record time. And a good thing, too, because you looked fit to stab our boss." He’s insisted on carrying Seth’s bag to the car – after cheerfully interrupting the tail end of the meeting, of course – and they're making the great escape from the parking lot.

Seth grits his teeth and starts sweating again. He hates being seen like this, even when he knows it’s safe and that this is the safest he’s ever felt in his life.

"Ah, c'mon, talk to me. If you're gonna be all murderous, it's good to take ownership -" 

It's stupid. It's inane. It's literally the only thing Seth can think of for some incredible nonsense reason as he explodes in frustration: "Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw, do I  _look_  like Mother Teresa?"

A peal of pure laughter rings through the car, and a sunbeam bursts through the clouds ahead, because of course it does. "That's how it is, eh?" He slows for the light, pitches his voice higher, and does an absolutely horrific Valley Girl impersonation. "Finn was my  _friend_ , and I traded him out for a bunch of swatch-dogs and diet-cokeheads."

Seth finally cracks a smile that quickly morphs into a full-blown cackle, and polishes his glasses on his t-shirt. He thinks about how he used to hate both of those things about himself.  

“You’re aggro today,” Finn observes when it fades, cocking his head to the side.

“Is it that obvious?”

"Do I need to go have a word with the big man?” Finn already knows the answer, but he thinks it might make Seth feel better to hear the question.

“Nah. We’re both fucked-up enough already – can you _not_ go all Eye-of-Sauron on me right now?” Seth smells the tiniest bit of brimstone.

“Can you not call it that?” Finn realizes his edges are peeling up a little – his vision hyperfocuses and goes red – and he takes his foot off the gas to drag in a deep breath and snap everything back into place. Like Legos. 

 _That's deep_ , he thinks, suppressing an ill-timed exhausted chuckle.  _Oughta write that one down._

"Sorry." He glances at Seth. "You're right. I'm pretty fuckin' wiped out myself. That was snippy." 

"It was, but I was also totally goading you, so." Seth raises his eyebrows. Settling shit like adults is still mega-weird. "I'm sorry, too." 

"We need a snack," says Finn. 

"We need a  _nap_ ," says Seth, draping his hand across Finn's thigh.

They look over at each other for a second.

"Both?"

"Both." 


	2. help me stay awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't want to hear anything about 'I don't believe in vampires,' because I don't fucking believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what I saw is fucking vampires."  
> -Seth Gecko, _From Dusk Till Dawn_
> 
> The boys go on vacation. Seth meets Finn's parents* and learns a little more about what he's gotten into. It's mushy as fuck and also there's demons. 
> 
> tw: blood, supernatural business, self-injury of sorts
> 
> soundtrack:  
> [counting crows - august and everything after - "perfect blue buildings"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSa1VtZhx2g)  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you might find this particular treatment off-putting, I'm writing this as more of a straight possession narrative than kayfabe and many others do. Write what you know, etc. 
> 
> I am borderline-embarrassed by how incapable I am of writing this pairing without an utterly disgusting amount of romance. i want to beat myself up and stuff myself in a locker
> 
> *In addition, I know nothing about Finn's family, and the thought of trying to find out was a little more shoot than I personally felt comfortable doing, so I just made stuff up instead.

Seth can tell how safe Finn feels by how much space he takes up - when he's scared, he makes himself bigger, louder, tense through the shoulders. He stops looking people in the eye and looks through them instead. When he's comfortable and confident and calm, he curls up like a kitten, making sweetly rounded shapes with his body. Even his face follows suit. 

So when Seth comes back to bed at 3am after pacing around their tiny rental flat in a fit of insomnia and finds him splayed out, silent and stiff under the covers, he knows it's not good. They've been doing this for a while, and it's never,  _ever_  good. Finn gets these nightmares sometimes, and he's always wrecked the morning after. He won't ever say what they're about.

Seth sucks in a breath, trying to read Finn in the dim light. His eyes are shut, and anyone who didn't know to look closely might miss the tension across his face. Might miss the way the dip in the blankets shows how hard he's pressed into the mattress, how the sheets are balled in his fists like an anchor. 

When he slips himself underneath the duvet and kisses Finn's shoulder, it's cold, and something smells like burning.  _Shit_. He knows this happens sometimes, too - there's a terrifying weakness, an openness, that comes with sleep, which is a large part of why Seth is so bad at it himself - but it's still disorienting. He turns to take a sip from the water glass on the nightstand. 

**You can't have him, you know.**

Seth freezes, then blinks hard. It's Finn's voice. It's definitely  _not_ Finn's voice. This is… new; aside from that one previous sentence during their match a lifetime ago, he’s never been directly addressed. He sets the glass down with a rattle, holds his breath, and forces himself to roll back over and face the middle of the bed. 

Finn hasn't moved, not a millimeter, but his eyes are open so wide it looks painful, and even in the tiny dapples of streetlight, they're the wrong fucking color. 

**He's _mine._**

Finn's lips don't move. The voice rolls through the room anyway, low and powerful. It sends goosebumps up Seth's arms, replacing fear with itchiness and annoyance.

"Seriously, dickhead?" Seth mumbles, scratching. He's tired, and jetlagged, and anxious about meeting Finn’s parents in the morning, and the idea of kissing ass to get his boyfriend back from a fucking demon is just not all that appealing right now. 

**He belongs to me.**

The voice is bitter-sharp and it makes Seth cringe. 

"That's nice. Now fuck off, I'm tired." Voice quivering, Seth lays out on his back next to Finn, trying really hard to ignore the chill emanating from the other half of the bed. He yawns in spite of himself. 

On impulse, he reaches out and runs his fingers down Finn's forearm, and realizes they're both trembling. When he gets to Finn's near hand, still clenched tight and shaky, he just drapes his own fingers on top and leaves them there. The chill starts to creep towards him, but he grits his teeth and thinks,  _fuck you, asshole_ as hard as he can, over and over. After what feels like hours, he jolts awake to find Finn's fingers tangled warmly with his own, and exhales loudly in relief. 

The sound makes Finn stir a little, and he squeezes Seth's hand, not letting go as he turns to face him and pulls his knees up, tucking gently into a relaxed ball and laying his other hand across Seth's chest, just over his heart. 

The sun is starting to come up. 

 

 _you got an attitude of everything i ever wanted_  
_i got an attitude of need_  
_help me stay awake, i’m falling_

 

* * *

 

 

"He fucking  _talked_ to me last night," Seth blurts out while they're in the shower. He's been almost physically unable to let Finn go all morning, caught somewhere between rattled and amused that he vaguely remembers cussing at a demon while half-awake. 

"Did he now?" Finn doesn't remember the details. He rarely does. "You alright?" 

"Yeah. Yeah. It was just fucking freaky." Seth pushes his wet hair back from his eyes. 

"He say anything interesting?" 

"Not really. At least he didn’t tell me I broke you again.” Finn flinches, and Seth feels sick to his stomach and instinctively tries to defuse. “To be honest, I was expecting less 'you can't have him' and more 'I'm going to crack your bones and drink the marrow' or something. I told him to fuck off." 

Finn spits water and starts giggling. "You did  _not!"_

Seth raises his hand. "I swear. Okay, I only  _thought_  the 'fuck off' part, but I definitely called him a dickhead." 

Finn's still giggling, hanging on Seth's shoulders for dear life. "You called my demon a dickhead," he wheezes. "I don't... For fuck's sake!" 

"What? I was tired. He was being really annoying. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this!" But Seth's starting to crack a little too, and weird night aside, he's got a beautiful naked man pressed against him like his life depends on it, and that's a lot more interesting to pay attention to. He slides his hands down, settling on the curve of Finn’s lower back, happy to let the warmth between their bodies wash everything else away. 

"I'm sorry," Finn mumbles into his neck, suddenly serious. "That must've been something else." 

"You can make it up to me," Seth mumbles back, feeling his cock stir. He's a little embarrassed about being so greedy, but at the same time, the urge to put as much as possible between them and this morning is pretty difficult to resist. 

"Yeah? Breakfast it is, then!" Finn gives him a cheeky wink and hops out of the tub, leaving Seth sputtering and half-hard right up until the moment the hot water clicks off and he lets out a most undignified yelp.

They dress in comfortable silence, corduroys and sunshine, and Finn takes over taming Seth’s bun when he’s too twitchy to make it stay on his own.

“You nervous?” he finally asks, smoothing back some stray tendrils of hair. Finn, of course, looks razor-sharp, like he’s about to casually stroll off to model for a sweater calendar or something.

Seth allows himself a tiny nod. “Yeah. A little. Never been too good at this.”

“They’re good people,” Finn says. “They’ve seen worse than you, for sure.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Seth snorts, and Finn wraps an arm around his waist, standing on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. It’s not at all necessary, but it’s ridiculously cute, and Seth feels a little bit more relieved as they head out.

Forgoing transit to walk the promenade running parallel to the sea seems like a pretty natural decision, and Seth is thrilled to close his eyes for a moment and let the air nudge him along.

When they reach the restaurant, Finn’s parents are already there, waving from an outside table, the backdrop making them look like a postcard. They hug Finn and Seth alike, eager to pass out menus and make recommendations, and before anyone even has time to be nervous, they’re sipping drinks and passing around sides with raucous acclaim.

Finn’s parents are like him in so many ways – cheerful, soft, and kind. They clearly adore their son, and that openness radiates, enveloping Seth like the sun. They ask what feels like a thousand questions, and watch Seth’s face with delight when he answers. It throws him for a loop at first, to be heard, really heard, especially by strangers who, at least on paper, qualify as authority figures.  

“Do you miss him?” he asks randomly. “I mean, I know he’s always been a traveler, but it seems like nobody in our line of work really gets the chance to go home.”  

“I miss  _him,_ but I don’t miss the racket!” Seth’s mom can barely contain her laughter. “Always knocking around and breaking things.”

Seth raises an eyebrow at Finn. “I had no idea you were so destructive.”

“Oh, it wasn’t him doing the breaking,” she clarifies. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Apparently not.” Seth forces a pretty good imitation of a smile and figures now might be a good time to just roll with the whole confusion thing.

“Ahh, I can’t blame him,” Finn’s dad butts in. “People sometimes go and act like they’ve never seen a ghost before. I’m just glad it finally left our boy and our house alone; got tired of hiding the good china. Hasn’t been back to bother any of us in nearly twenty years.” He nods at Finn, who bites his lip and nods back.  

“Well. Um. That’s good news. Do you know why it... left?”  _Ghosts and demons. What **is** this place?_

 “Who even knows, and who’s to question it now that we’ve had peace? These are godless times, Mr. Rollins,” Finn’s dad intones.

“I’ll drink to that,” Seth chirps, and Finn pokes him in the ribs.

They linger long past the end of their meal, making small talk that’s definitely not about ghosts. The sun peeks out soothingly from behind the clouds, Finn’s got his hand on Seth’s knee underneath the table, everything is breathtakingly green and normal and new. It actually feels okay.

“Take care of my boy,” Finn’s mother says as she hugs them both goodbye. His dad offers Seth a bone-crushing handshake and a smile, and they head off in opposite directions into the afternoon before the rain rolls in.

 

* * *

 

 

As they’re walking down the street, Finn slows his pace and gives Seth a conspiratorial look that’s absolutely brimming with the best kind of trouble. Seth’s pretty sure he knows exactly what it means, but plays along, biting his lip and raising an eyebrow.

“Can I help you with something, mister?”

“Yeah,” Finn murmurs, nudging his nose against Seth’s ear. “I need to get you back in bed before I lose my fuckin’ mind.”

 _Oh, two can play this goddamn game_ , Seth thinks, and whispers back, “Fine, but I’m gonna eat your ass until the neighbors complain.”

Finn shudders deliciously and wriggles. “That a promise, sweetheart?”

They don’t actually make it to bed. They don’t even make it out of the living room, stripping and stumbling across the room to the little couch. Seth’s hair gets caught in his shirt and comes tumbling down around his face, and Finn’s flushed through  _everywhere,_ dragging them together for kisses that keep getting longer and longer, like he’s trying to fill space. He’s usually a lot more talkative, usually a lot more patient, usually a lot more eager to tease, and Seth picks it up immediately, anxiety on high alert that something’s wrong, that he’s wrong, that this is wrong somehow.

“Talk to me,” he pleads, cupping Finn’s face in his hands, aggravated at the whine in his own voice. “Did I fuck up? What happened?”

“I love you,” Finn groans, and it occurs to him that he can’t really think of a time in their lives when he  _didn’t._ Even as it had gone unspoken, it seemed like a given – a constant in the universe, one of the very few. He’s been telling himself to be patient, to let it go, to say it in as many ways as he can without running his goddamn  _mouth,_ knowing he’s a knotty mess of complications and nerves and things that don’t make sense, constantly tightroping between happily trying to fulfill Seth’s craving for touch and praise with his own need to not pressure, not push, not make anyone in the history of the world ever feel obligated to take him on.

“Really?” Seth is flustered, confused, hair falling in his eyes and tangled hopelessly. He’s beautiful.

“Of course,” Finn teases, momentarily relaxed now that the truth is explicitly out there, able to briefly once again enjoy Seth’s constant bewilderment at even the smallest acts of affection. Then he slows, reaching for his cheek. “If that’s okay with you, though.” His eyes are fixed on Seth’s, the play of the light through the thin curtains giving them flecks of green and gold.

_how do i say yes fuck yes yes always i’ve been begging and bargaining the universe for this all along yes_

He just lunges forward, pulling Finn into a deep and inelegant kiss, hands tight at the sweet spots on Finn’s nape and lower back, and accidentally knocks them both off the couch in a slow roll. It seems like they should be giggling but instead they’re breathless, impatient, bare skin tacky against the wood floor.

“iloveyoutoo,” Seth manages to squeak out as Finn hooks his leg over Seth’s hip, pulling them to their sides. Those fucking  _eyes_ seem to sparkle again, even as the clouds roll in outside.

“Yeah? I don’t think I heard you, sweetheart. Tell me again.” Even when he’s being demanding, it’s pure mischief, a promise of good things, of better things, and Seth almost never questions it.

“I love you,” he breathes, clearer this time, and Finn’s shoulders loosen like he’s dropped something heavy. He dips his head, circling his tongue over Seth’s nipple, and Seth lets out a noise Finn wants to hear in his dreams.

“I love you,” Seth says again, and Finn smiles against him, greedy little thing, greedy little love, then bites down gently, stroking the other nipple with his fingertips.

“I love you.” Seth’s voice cracks a little now as he writhes, and Finn laughs.

“Positive reinforcement ain’t so bad, is it?” He looks up at Seth’s helpless face and flicks his tongue out again, tasting sweat and the peak of Seth’s chest. The words, coming from him, feel like some sort of catechism, some mantra to take the rest of the world away, and that’s how he knows they’re real, with their wonderful ache.

He wants Seth close, he always wants him close, but he also wants him keening and desperate in a way that no one else sees behind the careful, scheming exterior. Teasing him into a hopeless frenzy is just too goddamn  _satisfying._ It makes Finn feel nine feet tall. Outside the bedroom, Finn can tear Seth to ribbons just by standing there, murmuring a few words, looking at him the right way from across a crowded room.

Inside the metaphorical bedroom, though, Seth might have a slight advantage. He sees the opening, and dives for Finn’s mouth, nipping at the sensitive flesh of his lower lip. Finn nearly collapses on him at that – he’s one big bundle of nerve endings, overstimulated at the drop of a fingertip. Every slip of skin on skin, every point of contact is an overwhelm for him. Seth is pretty sure he could just make Finn come in his pants by kissing that mouth, or his throat, or his hipbones, and maybe someday he will. For now, though, he’s wide-eyed and distracted at the way Finn sucks his fingers and cries out, rolling himself beautifully against Seth’s thigh.

“My fucking turn,” he says, pulling his slick fingers out and gently tapping Finn’s lower lip.

“I love you,” Finn gasps, all fucked-out and goddamn  _pastoral_ laid out against the floor. Seth reaches down and wraps those same fingers around Finn’s cock as lightly as he can. Finn bucks up into his hand instantly. “I fucking love you, my heart.”

“Then get in me, for fuck’s sake.” Seth’s voice cracks again, and in a flash, Finn is deadlifting him off the floor and over his shoulder, carrying him to the bedroom like there’s nothing to it.

He half expects to be tossed facedown and fucked desperately into the mattress, but instead Finn takes his time, lays him out on his back and smooths his hair down like he can’t get enough of these moments, because he can’t. Seth reaches out, drags his hands down Finn’s torso, and revels in the way his eyes close and he loses all possible trains of thought for the moment. Yes, he’s gorgeous and impeccably crafted by the genetic gods, but it’s his sensitivity, his care, his kindness, and his goddamn wonderful face that makes Seth lightheaded with need as Finn shakes his head to snap out of it, slicks up, and works himself inside with an aching tenderness.

“This what you want, love?” Finn asks with a smirk, eyes creased with joy at the way Seth’s mouth pops open with every thrust. “You want to hear it while I fuck you?”

All Seth can say is, “I love you.”

“I know.” That smirk again. Seth rakes his nails down his chest, and Finn gasps. “Love you too.”

They’re lost, they’re both lost, wandering through each other for what feels like twilight hours in a muddle of endearments and affirmations and yearnings.

“Pull my hair?” Seth asks, and Finn’s face lights up with joy. He eases himself out, both of them groaning at the sensation of being parted, and then he turns Seth around, taking the man he loves firmly by the roots and guiding him gently into the most beautiful arch as he re-lubes and slides back inside.

They’re nearly cheek to cheek now, and Finn takes the opportunity to murmur an endless, meandering stream of filthy praise, only about half of which Seth even understands. He’s not really in a place for words, and drops down even deeper when Finn wraps his other arm tight around Seth’s waist, bracing them together as he grinds. The tip of Seth’s cock is leaking all over Finn’s forearm, and he can feel the corner of that smile against the corner of his own mouth, turning his face for a kiss and getting teeth and tongue and a little bit of sweat as it rolls down.

As the tension begins to pool in his stomach, he swears to himself that he won’t beg. He always swears that, and he’s always wrong, perhaps because he enjoys the small dark thrill of breaking a promise to himself.

 

_wanna get me a little oblivion, baby  
try to keep myself away from myself and me_

 

* * *

 

 

Seth is awakened by his aching knee, aware of that creeping sensation once more. He grumbles, and rolls over for a glance at the clock on the far side of the bed.

It’s a little past 3am.

Finn’s gone.

 _Fuck._  Seth is bolt upright in seconds, hugging the duvet close to his chest like armor. His eyes are wide, pupils blown in the search for light, and when he scrambles for the bedside lamp and hits the switch, he curses at the sudden glow. He takes another long look around the room. Finn’s not there. But something is. Or the absence of something. Seth can feel it, in a way he’s loathe to even try and describe to anyone who might ask.

He rolls out of bed in near-silence, padding his cautious way to the kitchen. No Finn. Not there, not on the couch. He’s not in the bathroom, either; the door is open and everything is still pitch black. Seth goes back to the bedroom to grab a shirt and formulate some semblance of a plan –  _did he go outside? How would I even find him if he did?_ – when he hears a low scraping sound.

He was wrong about the bathroom.

**He’s mine, you know.**

That voice again, the one that oh-so-matter-of-factly slithers between his ribs like a knife and drains the courage right out. Seth forces himself to take a step forward, then another. Now he sees what he missed – the tiniest silhouette along the bathroom door, leftover moonlight through the small window. Seth reaches out and puts his hand on the shadow of Finn’s face, and that feels better somehow, but when he turns to actually  _look,_ his entire body goes tingling and numb.

Finn’s sitting in the bathtub, listlessly scraping his short nails along the tile. Seth sees dark streaks along their path – he’s pretty sure it’s blood. Finn’s eyes are dark and vacant, head cocked at an odd angle. His whole body is rigid, unnaturally straight, muscles quivering with the effort.

Seth has no idea what to do.

“Finn?” Seth’s never been much of one for pet names, but he tries anyway, thinking it might crack the shell somehow. “Babe? You okay?”

 _Dumb question of the century, asshole,_  his brain cheerfully pipes up, and he shakes his head in frustration.  

Finn twists towards him in a single snakelike movement, and tilts his head to the other side. His neck pops.

**Mine mine mine. All mine, all ways.**

“He’s  _not,_ ” Seth says, feeling defiant. He’s scrabbling for anything, pieces of trivia, lines from old books. “He’s not yours. You don’t belong here.”

**Oh, sweet child. But I _do_. He didn’t tell you?**

Now the voice is saccharine and serrated, like terrible fingers weaving through his hair.  _Don’t talk to the fucking demon,_  Seth’s brain hisses.  _This is, like, Horror Movies 101. Don’t talk to the fucking demon_ – “Tell me what?”

Finn smiles, razor-sharp, all teeth and no eyes.

**He asked for this.**

Seth snaps, and drops to his knees on the cold bathroom floor. “Oh my  _god,_ fuck you,” he snarls, trying to ignore the deepening pit in his stomach.

He tries to reach for Finn, but he just can’t – it’s like somebody put a pane of glass between him and the edge of the tub. A sticky, solid, impenetrable, disgusting pane of glass that feels like viscera and spiderwebs. Seth cusses again and pulls his hand back, wiping it on his shirt as though that will take the sensation away. He feels the tears roll down his face and makes no effort to stop them. 

_Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I fucking hate you. Give him back give him back –_

Everything evaporates.

The air is thick and heavy, but clear.

They’re alone again.

Seth coughs back a sob and reaches forward again, rewarded with the slick surface of the bathtub under his hand. He hauls himself forward with shaking arms, barely even noticing that he’s whacked his knee pretty hard in the process.

The scraping has stopped.

Finn’s hands are balled up in strained fists again. Blood is dripping from the left one, down his palm, across his wrist, trickling into the bathtub. Seth climbs in there with him, banging his knee again, and crosses his legs, ignoring the dark smears attaching themselves to his skin.

Finn crumples like wet newspaper, dropping most of his body weight onto Seth. His arms are aching, but he refuses to let go. “Where am I?” he stutters into Seth’s shoulder, cracked lips barely able to part enough to let the words out.

“You’re in… you’re with me.” Seth feels himself starting to lose it.

Finn’s voice is still whisper-quiet when he curls up the corner of his mouth. “No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering.”

“I just walked in on you bleeding in the bathtub and now you’re quoting  _Hellraiser_?” Seth is honestly shocked by how fast he can go from distressed to perplexed. The human psyche is a hell of a thing.

Finn gives a tiny shrug. “Easier than making sentences.” He reaches for Seth’s face, and then pulls back. “I got red on you.”

“’S okay. I think there’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen.” Seth starts to get up, joints creaking, but Finn grabs his wrist. His grip is weak and shivery, but it’s there.

“Don’t leave me in here?”

He sets Finn down at the kitchen table, covering him with a towel he snagged on their way out of the bathroom – it’s not doing much to stop the trembling, but he doesn’t want to leave Finn’s side long enough to get the duvet. He turns on the hot water, and digs under the sink for the small plastic box, popping the latches in an eventually successful hunt for gauze and tape before gesturing to Finn to join him. The nails on Finn’s left hand are ripped down to the quick, his fingers and palm lacerated and Seth gently holds them in his own, adding a little bit of soap and lathering as tenderly as he can. Finn doesn’t hiss, doesn’t cringe, doesn’t make a sound, but Seth can feel him shift his weight and lean a little more, moment by moment, as the last stubborn flecks of dried blood disappear down the drain. By the time he goes back to rinse out the tub, popping the light switch to reveal a few small pools and streaks, Finn is half-asleep again, barely able to hold himself upright, bandaged hand propped on the bathroom door.

 

 _it’s 430am on a tuesday_  
_and it doesn’t get much worse than this_  
_in beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle of these lives_  
_which are completely meaningless_  
_help me stay awake, i’m falling_

 

Finn pulls him into a tight kiss as soon as they’re back in bed, tape bumping up against Seth’s face and sticking a little to his beard. He’s desperate, utterly at odds with the languid tease he prefers in the daytime, seeming to care about nothing more than making as much contact as often as possible. Seth wants to slow him down with measured, lingering movements, but Finn’s already got his shirt halfway over his head and he’s frantic, voice cracking with need as they strip. His mouth tastes like salt and a little bit of blood, but the kiss is all tongue and no teeth and Seth finds himself reckless but not violent, drumming his fingers on Finn’s collarbone and breaking the kiss long enough to lick the sweat from Finn’s throat. At that, Finn arches up with a choked cry, and Seth can all but hear Finn’s pulse against his lips.

“Is this what you want?” he murmurs, biting back a whimper of his own when Finn wrenches him close with one arm around his waist, letting their cocks slide in leaking, hypersensitive tandem. “Babe, tell me this is you right now.”  _Tell me who this is. Tell me you’re in there._

“I need you, my heart,” Finn pleads, blue, blue eyes skittering up Seth’s face, good hand tangled in his hair. “Brought me back and I need you.”

In the darkness, in the fear, in the tension and want, Seth slides a hand between their bodies, tries to ease Finn down flat on his back, but he cringes so hard it threatens to crack the air in the room, and Seth understands, and lets go. Not like this. He curls Finn up to his side like it’s nothing, kisses him all over his sweet face, draws his fingers over the pale, battered skin in intricate, abstract patterns. Right now, the thing Finn needs most in the world is the thing that daylight won’t allow him: to be small, and soft, and tender.

“It’s okay,” Seth mutters. “I’m not fucking going anywhere.” And it’s true. Even as his brain twists and turns and  _you never leave, you only leave first,_ he knows it’s true. He’ll stay here until the sun comes up; he’ll stay here until the cars go by and the rain falls like it does every afternoon and the plants grow too tall to see through. Because the thing Seth needs most in the world is the thing that daylight won’t allow him: to be needy, and scared, and fragile. And it may not feel that way in this bed, as he cradles the man he loves, but it is, more than anything he’s ever experienced – the chance to be strong for someone else is also a chance to be his own sweet place to fall.

They are for each other. 

Finn kisses him again, and the taste is the same but the taste is different, like he could melt into Seth if he could, and Seth worries as always that he’s going to leave beard burn on Finn’s sensitive mouth but as always it never stops Finn from pulling him close enough to ache. They sleep like that, eventually, sometime around sunrise.

 

 _well i got bones beneath my skin_  
_and mister, there’s a skeleton in every man’s house_  
_beneath the dust and love and sweat that hang on everybody_  
_there’s a dead man trying to get out_  
_so please help me stay awake, i’m falling_

 

When Finn wakes up and wanders into the living room, Seth is already in the kitchen, clutching his mug so hard he might shatter the ceramic. He’s got some ice on his bruised knee, and everything feels jittery and sore.

"I talked to him again last night. He said you  _volunteered_. What are you not telling me? I’m trying so fucking hard to come to grips with this fucking demon shit and I need all the help I can get.”

Finn can tell how safe Seth feels by his voice. When Seth talks, even when Finn can't see him, he can tell not only from the words Seth chooses but also from the tension in Seth's face, the way he breathes, the resulting shape of his fiddly leftover accent. And right now, even from the next room over, he sounds like he’s rotting inside.

"We should get out of here," Finn says.

Seth’s jaw clenches, but he nods. “Why?”

“I don’t know. The air hurts.”

 

* * *

 

 

They arrive at the gardens through a series of narrow gates; Finn goes first, holding his hand at the small of his back in a clear invitation that Seth scrambles to accept. When they reach the back, Seth gasps at the huge mansion laid out before them. It feels unfathomably ancient, somehow, like even the dirt in the flower beds has been there for more generations than he could possibly comprehend, and yet everything is clear and bright and beautifully lit, even through the clouds. But when they walk through the back entrance, and are suddenly standing atop a huge terraced hill, each marble step bigger than his apartment back home, he’s truly speechless.

It’s all laid out in front of him in the shape of a cross, a direct line of sight from the delicate fences to the lake below, with the woods spread out all around like a nest of secrets. He thinks he sees towers peeking out between the trees. He and Finn all but skip down to the lake, taking huge steps and nearly tripping and taking each other out in the process before pausing, breathless, between the winged statues at the edge of the water.

They wander for a long time, up and around the staircases shuffling their feet over the beautiful geometric patterns on the tile. Finn seems happiest in the Japanese gardens, running his fingers delicately across the leaves and climbing up the rocks and gazebo railings.

Finally, as their footsteps are echoing up the spiraled stone into an empty tower, Finn just blurts it out: “It wasn’t a ghost.”

Seth shakes his head. He was pretty sure of that much already. “How do your parents not know he’s… in there?”

“Because that was the deal.” Finn shrugs.

“With who?” Seth feels the exasperation poking out, and makes a concerted effort to quiet down.

Finn’s silent for a long, long time. “I was just a kid,” he finally says, voice cracking a little on the last syllable. “I didn’t know what else to do. I’m not even sure how it  _got_ there.” He reaches for Seth’s hand without looking, and his fingers are chilly. “They barely noticed at first. You saw ‘em; mom and dad didn’t think anything of it.”

“Seriously?” Seth  _did_  see it, and he’s still baffled.

Finn shrugs. “We all grew up with stories. Especially da, he’s from pretty far into the countryside. Everybody’s got their monsters, right? Americans have fucking… whatever that thing is that Dean won’t shut up about.”

“Are you really comparing this to fucking Bigfoot?”

“Why not?” Finn’s posture is, to Seth, confusingly insolent. “There’s people on the roster who don’t believe in evolution, for fuck’s sake.”

“Because that has no –“ Seth pulls up and realizes he’s hopelessly sidetracked. “I’m sorry. Please. Keep going.”

“Look, sometimes this shit happens. Half the families I grew up with have a tale about things moving after you’ve set them down, or windows opening, or chairs tipping over. And with kids in the house – the way I’ve heard it told, the noisy ones attach themselves to younguns especially. Something about all the energy running about. So they thought, no big deal, it’s just a poltergeist.”

 _Just a poltergeist._ Seth has to actually bite his fist at that one. “They didn’t know it was you.”

“They didn’t. And I wasn’t about to tell them. I thought they’d… send me away or something. I was nine, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t know what was wrong with me – only that I’d see things, I’d come to and have no idea how long I’d been gone.” He laughs, but it’s harsh and sour. “Mum thought I was gifted, because I knew what was coming.”

“But they must’ve figured it out.”

“They almost did. Eventually.”

Seth waits, but Finn doesn’t speak and doesn't speak. 

He pitches his voice as soft and careful as he can.

“What  _happened,_  Finn?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trivia fact:  
> I picked Powerscourt as the setting here because it's beautiful and invokes a lot of emotions for me and is also in Finn's home base of County Wicklow. It also turns out that I'm a giant fucking sap, because about twenty seconds after I made that decision, I remembered with no small amount of fluttering that Powerscourt is actually where @never_shuts_up and I met for the first time almost fifteen years ago. I was literally too shy to talk to other humans, but she was extremely cute and very very nice and wearing a Stiff Little Fingers hoodie (I think) and I was like telepathically stuttering "please be my friend" for half the damn day.


	3. with a stronger honest heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It is interesting to observe how quickly the abnormal can become a commonplace in a person’s life when paranormal activity takes hold."  
> -David M. Kiely + Christina McKenna
> 
> one step forward, two steps back, or maybe it's the other way around
> 
> tw: more demons. discussions of bad things happening to kids. conjure/hoodoo/witchery. the ruination of a perfectly good leather jacket
> 
> soundtrack:  
> kick in the pants - action packed - "let it flow"  
> [brown bird - the devil dancing - "devil dancing"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CISWxduHqs4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to come out on Halloween but then me and my dog BOTH got sick and neither of us are any good at proofreading. I could honestly have made this story twice as long and still enjoyed writing it - you would not BELIEVE the number of words I cut (insert cry-laugh emoji).

_i saw you by the morning light_  
_with crimson skies and blacked-out eyes_  
_you said, ‘i’ll haunt your dreams’;_  
_no one even knows what that means_

* * *

 

Seth knows he's biting off the words harder than he meant to, and nearly takes off his own tongue as he pulls up to a stop in the stairwell. "What happened?”

Finn shrugs and keeps climbing, mumbling almost to himself. “Gettin' in fights, fucking up everything around.” He rubs the back of his neck and waits as Seth jogs the last few stairs to catch up. “Sounds like teenager shit if it weren't for the seizures, but it just _wasn't_. It was something else. I never remembered any of it after, sometimes for hours. Couldn't tell you my own name. It got bad. I'd wake up, broken glass everywhere, scratches all over me, pictures torn off the walls, just..." He trails off as they cross the roof in a few steps.

Seth leans against the railing. Looks down over the tops of the trees. Thinks about the blood in the bathtub. Doesn't say anything.

"Every doctor said I was okay, every test came out _normal_." Finn answers the unspoken question, spits the word out like it tastes bad. "Scared out of my fuckin' mind all the time and underneath it all just this _anger._ And nobody saw it was me. Like the house, like some fucking banshee or some vagabond spirit could have done all this." He white-knuckles the railing.

Seth takes a step back, watches the tense, broad set of Finn's shoulders. He desperately wants to touch him, but he doesn't know if that would make it better or worse and he's afraid to ask. To break the spell.  _if he stops talking he might never start again_

"My aunt finally sent them to the parish priest. He did a thing at the house. A mass. It, ehm. It didn’t take." Finn shudders at the understatement, flooded with memories. Nightmares. Every part of the story he's not telling. Can't. "And the bishop, or whoever his boss was, said not to do it again. So the priest came back. Told them it was… _attached_ to me. I was fifteen then. All that time I spent trying to hide it and he just spat it right out in front of god and my parents. And they let him take me. Fuck, I volunteered."

"Jesus," Seth finally says, and Finn flinches hard, sunlight combing down through his hair. It should feel good. It should feel reassuring. It doesn't. Seth's stomach drops out. "Did he..."

Finn's got his eyes screwed shut now, like that'll keep back the shame, but the glint at the corner of his eye gives it away. "Not like that. He locked me in the church basement." His voice is hoarse, nearly carried away on the wind. "I think I was there for five days. It was screaming bloody murder the whole time. Just screaming. I couldn’t even hear what he was saying. My skin hurt so bad."

Seth instinctively moves forward, touches the small of Finn's back. His shirt is warm, but the skin underneath has a chill. Finn flinches again, and Seth freezes, but after a moment, he feels Finn curl into the heat of his hand and he steps up closer, hugs Finn's back. Finn squeezes his forearms, briefly, and then turns around, burying his face into the sleeve of Seth's t-shirt.

Finn's breath hitches. It seems like he feels safer talking when no one is looking, so Seth tilts his eyes to the sky, just barely able to put his chin on top of Finn's head as he takes a deep, shivering breath.

"Then _he_ showed up. They kicked down the door in my fuckin' head and he showed up. He said he’d make it go away if I took him in. That's how he phrased it. _Took him in_ , like he was a beggar or an orphan. That I could never be fuckin’ unbroken again, but that he could have the loudest voice, show me how to look normal. Hide it from my parents. Live a regular life. Keep myself under control. It sounds ridiculous. But he said he needed a place to go, and I was dying.” Finn shakes his head, and looses his grip, feels he's digging his fingers into Seth's arms way too hard, but every time he exhales he realizes he's doing it again. “I was seein' things. _More_ things. Starving. Seizing so hard I couldn’t stay still. Thinking I was gonna die down there.”

Seth has read about things like this. In the early days of their relationship, he spent an embarrassing amount of time on the internet, wading through various levels of Satanic Panic bullshit only to find himself open-mouthed horrified at stories of people chained to crosses for weeks, beaten to their knees, and dying, really dying of dehydration or hunger or fear, bones and bodies and spirits broken at the hands of incompetent, self-important charlatans. A "real" exorcism, Seth had learned, was an ongoing, continuous process, one of eventual housekeeping more than this backcountry improvisation that embraced its torturous makeup with a little more joy than was actually necessary, but neither were guarantees or solutions to what often became a lifelong struggle. Even when it was handled as well as a community might try, the ones who got away rarely emerged intact, spending the rest of their lives haunted and empty-eyed and staggering through a dismal, tormented existence, numbed-out on substances or anger or exhaustion, sometimes even killing themselves outright instead of going through it all for the thousandth time.

Finn repeats, "I thought I was gonna die down there. I was gonna die down there." His voice gets a little louder, like some invisible audience is questioning him.

Seth steps back, tries to make eye contact, but Finn only flicks his gaze for a second. “So you said yes.” He tilts his head carefully, tries to keep his voice calm even as his whole body seethes with anger - for Finn, for his family, and more than a little bit for himself at his complete, universe-gifted inability to make even a tiny fraction of this better.

Finn’s breath catches in his chest again. “I said yes."

"And he's been there ever since."

"In some form or another." Finn pushes himself further away, wipes his eyes. "I had such good control over him. Everything was going fine." That's not entirely true, but he says it anyway, because wouldn't it be great if things were that simple. "And then you came along."

Seth throws his hands in the air, all pretense of patience evaporated. "So what, this is my fault?"

"I mean, if you want to get technical - "

"Are you _serious_ right now? You just told me that you got kidnapped into some sort of bullshit snake-handling... evangelist insanity!"

"I don't think it would have happened without you, okay? That's all I mean. I lost control. Not entirely, just enough, and on some sick level it felt so fucking good to just drop it until I realized what the consequences would be. If one or the other of us walks away, maybe things go back to. Ya know. Normal."

Seth feels his guts twist again and again. "Is that what you want?" _is that what i want?_

Finn hops up on the edge of the tower, gaze fixed on the ground below. He doesn't mean anything by it - he just likes climbing, and watching - but Seth doesn't like it, with how bad Finn's been shaking, and carefully tucks his hand into the crook of Finn's elbow. Then it dawns on him, almost embarrassingly slow, that Finn is shaking with laughter.

"D'ya know what I was gonna do after we got back from this trip?" He doesn't wait long enough for Seth to answer. "I was gonna ask you to move in with me, or at least see if you wanted to talk about it. Been wanting to for a while. And maybe that's why it's gotten worse."

"What, you think he feels threatened?" Seth can't keep himself from scoffing, just a little, at the image of some ancestral, eternally-minded evil stomping around in a tantrum at the thought of seeing his shoes intermingled with Finn's in the foyer. But even as he does, the events of the last few days and weeks are never far from his mind. Things have been tense in the air, something he'd been eager to chalk up to travel and work and everything else. Because it wasn't between him and Finn, it didn't feel that way. It was between something else.

"I don't know. The last thing I want is to ever walk away. Ever. But it's not up to me - I'm not the one who's taking it on." He picks his head up and looks looks _looks_ at Seth for the first time in a while, serious eyes pale in the light. "And nobody would blame you if you didn't. I never planned for it. No way of telling what you'd be getting into, really."

And that's when Seth fucking _gets_ it for the first time - the way everyone is close to Finn but never that close. There's a line he doesn't cross, one that's wildly noticeable in the no-boundaries-having world that makes up their livelihood.

"You've never done this before," he says, with a tremor and a little awe.

Finn tries to crack a smile. It reaches about halfway through his eyes. "Yeah. Never wanted to."

Seth closes his eyes. This is not something he'd ever thought to plan for until very recently. The thought had crossed his mind a few times, but it seemed insurmountably complicated in light of current events. It's more than a little terrifying, for about eight different reasons.

Finn’s voice breaks through the cloud of his thoughts. “You want me to leave you alone?”

Seth nods, not trusting his voice. “Little bit.”

“Why don’t I, ehm. I’ll see you back at the house?” Finn takes a deep breath, willing himself to believe that Seth’s going to come back. Even if the answer is “Get away from me forever,” that maybe he’ll come back. Because then he’ll know. He’ll know it was a mistake, and he’ll never do it again.

Another nod.

Finn nods back, and makes his way down the stairs.

“Wait,” Seth calls, and before Finn can fully turn around, he’s wrapped up in a big, strong pair of arms and there’s warm, sweet-smelling hair in his face. “I’m coming back.” Seth says it firmly, trying to convince them both, trying to quiet the part of him that’s screaming _there has got to be another way, there is another way, that way is to do everyone a favor and be gone forever._

Finn smiles, quietly. “Yeah?”

Instead of answering, Seth kisses him, carefully at first, but then slower and deeper until they’re both breathing a little heavy when he pulls away. “Promise.” Finn peels himself away a bit at a time, giving Seth’s hand one last little squeeze before he heads down the staircase and back into the gardens. Seth watches him walk away at first, then grips the railing and drops, sitting on the ground and pressing his back flat against the ledge.

 

 _i’m falling out_  
_you’re falling into a void_  
_that reason forgot, forgot_

 

Seth’s head hurts, like the thoughts are careening around with enough violence to rattle his skull. The sun feels oppressive, now, and his chest is tight and merciless. Knees tucked to his chest, dirty glasses tucked in his shirt. Eyes dry, hands tingling. Broken. Broken. Broken. Too numb for thoughts.

He just forces himself to keep breathing, keep counting the cracks in the stone, keep not-falling-apart. A small family makes their way up the stairs to join him, and he manages to crack a small smile at the children.

“You sick?” The older one is probably ten, and has that uncanny cleverness in her eyes.

“Nah,” Seth lies. “I just hurt my knee a while back and sometimes all these stairs, ya know. They’re tough.”

“You gonna take a nap?” The not-quite-a-toddler-how-old-is-that-again chirps.

“I might. Sure is a nice day for it.”

The kid nods seriously and ambles back to the steps, parents in tow. Naps solve everything.

After what feels like seventeen days, the sensations start to fade and the brainwaves come crashing back in.

_what the fuck am I doing? what are **we** doing? there’s no plan for this. okay. okay. breathe. what do you know? you love him. he loves you. this is the best it’s ever been. probably for both of you._

_but then there’s the other thing. you know it’s only going to get worse. you know that. every time you wake up, every time your eyes close, every time you hear that fucking voice and it’s never going away. you know that too. he needs it, maybe as much as you need him. and you made it worse. you made it worse because it **hates** you. because it thinks you’re going to take him away, because admit it, you’d fucking love to –_

_why can’t he just get a real fucking exorcism? young priest, old priest, power of christ compels you?_

_you know why. you know why. that takes apart your whole lives down to the marrow, that’s why. he loses the thing that keeps him safe that you’d like to pretend you can replace but you can’t. and what, you start saying the fucking rosary every night? keeping the holy water on the mantel next to the family bible?_

Seth thinks for Finn he might, but in the same breath he knows it's a wave of emotion and fierce love speaking. He can't. He knows he can’t.

“They kicked down the door in my fuckin' head and he showed up.”

_who’s to even fucking say it wouldn’t get him something worse the next time? who’s to say it wouldn’t kill him? you made him lose control. this is **all your fault** , just like you’ve always known, just like everything else you’ve fucked up, only this is way, way worse._

_So. How. Do. You. Fix. It. how do you fix it, rollins? you don’t know shit about shit, you don’t know the first thing about going this alone, hell, you don’t even know if he **wants** you to._

Seth sits in silence for a long time, devoid even of thoughts, of words, of anything more than snippets of syllables and flashes of nightmares and the crush of loneliness. Then it comes to him, in a voice so foreign he barely recognizes it as his own.

_You don’t. **You** do. You do it together._

He almost falls down the stairs in his haste to get out, a humid afternoon breeze rummaging through into his scalp.

 

* * *

 

 _you won’t find the devil dancing_  
_around your door_  
_but i heard him in every sound_  
_that your fiddle implored_

 _and his voice called me out_  
_on that killing floor_  
_he struck me down to die_  
_for to rise no more_

 

Finn’s sitting at the kitchen table when Seth comes all but lurching through the front door, hair a wild mess. It looks like he _ran_ all the way back, and the thought makes Finn suppress a smile. His eyes are still sore, and that weak, thuddy pulse at the base of his skull threatens to punch through at any second.

“You okay, love?”

“I – We – we have to do this _together_ ,” Seth says, wide-eyed, like he’s just found the Ark of the Covenant.

“Now what’s that mean?” Finn gently turns his head. He feels a little hope bubbling up in his chest and forces it back down.

“We have to _do this._ ” Seth’s gesturing is almost mesmerizing. “We can’t – I can’t fix it. You can’t fix it. But maybe we can both fix it? Or make it fit somehow? Look, I know I can’t ask you to go through… _that_ again. And I won’t. It’s fucked-up and wrong what they did to you, and it’s fucked-up and wrong that doing it again, even the ‘right’ way, whatever that is, could make it worse and it’s this thing, this thing that’s been here longer than you or I or anyone else, and there’s no _disposition_ , there’s no aspiring vacuum, there’s no –“

“Hang on, hang on.” Finn puts his tea down and interrupts Seth’s ramble. “Where did you even hear that shit?”

"M... Malachi Martin?" Seth responds.

"Oi, that dickhead?” Finn snorts. “That book is older than both of us, and twice as pompous.”

That elicits a big goofy grin. “Yeah, I mean, it was at the library, I just… I dunno man, it’s a little purple. A lot purple. But he has a point. That none of this can happen unless you let it or want it to, and you _don’t_ want it to, and to try and make it otherwise would be not only fucked-up but it wouldn’t work!” Finn’s gaze drops immediately, and Seth carefully pulls up a chair. He rolls the words around in his mouth for a very long time before finally speaking aloud. “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

“You don’t mean that.” Finn’s voice is muffled through his hands, and Seth reaches out, tenderly tracing circles just above Finn’s knees.

“I... I fucking do, Finn. I’ve been kicking the shit out of myself for months about this, about how it would go away if you really wanted it to, about how it still being there meant I wasn’t doing a good enough job because if I loved you enough, you wouldn’t need it anymore. And you keep saying –“

“It’s not about you.” Finn looks like he’s ready to just go facedown on the table.

“You’re right, okay? It’s not. I tried to make it about me because I was afraid it was true, and because I’m fucking _selfish._ And easier – if it was all my fault, it would be my job to fix, and if I couldn’t do it, it was because I was a failure. Simple.”

“Do you… do you have a brain slug?” Finn’s skepticism is cuter than it has any right to be, and Seth cackles, pulling off his glasses and cleaning them on his shirt.

“Not that I’m some fucking expert on relationship problems —” _that don’t involve running the fuck away forever and ever—_ “but this is just an extraordinarily weird variation, right? At the end of the day, you have a thing. It’s destructive, and it’s not normal, but it’s a thing you have that you held onto because you need it. It’s not just gonna go away on its own. How is that any different than the fact that I can’t go anywhere without having plans B through M in place because I’m so goddamn scared of something going wrong?”

“Is plan M the one where everybody dies?” Finn can’t fucking help it. He _smiles._ It almost knocks Seth out of his chair.

“Nah, just maybe one or two people – do you see what I’m getting at?”

Finn rubs his eyes, feeling that pesky _hope_ thing again. “My plan M involves the super-fucking-natural, it’s not _exactly_ the same.”

“Fair enough, but it’s still a coping mechanism, and those things exist for a reason, right? You can’t force them out of being. They’re there to protect you, or at least they were at some point. That’s what my shrink says.”

Finn’s flooded with a weird twisty guilt at the reminder that Seth started going to therapy once their relationship got serious. _You drove him to it,_ his brain always pings, like it’s not a perfectly normal thing that millions of people do.

Seth leans forward and takes Finn’s hands in his own, carefully, like he might jump or bite. “Do you really want to move in together?”

Finn looks up, eyes watery. “If you’ll have me.” _And all my fuckups and all my dysfunction and all my everything._

“Will you have _me?_ ” _And all my fuckups and all my dysfunction and all my everything._ Seth didn’t mean for that phrasing to come out quite so playful, but it definitely did, and there’s no taking it back now.

And no regrets, either, as Finn’s face _lights_ up with joy and he dives out of his chair to straddle Seth’s lap. “Every definition of the term, sweetheart.” He kisses Seth hard with relief and is rewarded with a terrific series of noises as he grinds his hips down, thighs clenched tight, tiptoes on the kitchen floor.

“After this —“ Seth begins, only to cut himself off with a filthy guttural sound as one of Finn’s strong hands winds its way into his hair. “After this, we’re coming up with a plan. Think about that.”

“Make me,” Finn teases, choosing instead to think about his fingers hooking hard into Seth’s shoulderblade.

Seth can’t help his own smile. Finn loves to tease, and tease, and tease, but sometimes he just heats up with need and those two words are, aside from a snappy retort, a sign that this is clearly one of those occasions. He shifts his weight in the chair a little, cupping Finn’s ass to keep him in place. Finn ducks his head into Seth’s shoulder and lets out a cry that sounds suspiciously like a sob, but when Seth moves his hands to Finn’s back to comfort him, he shakes his head, hard. “Don’t, please.”

“Don’t what?” Seth noses up against Finn’s ear, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it anyway. “Don’t do it, or don’t stop?” Then he cackles. “Speak up, sweetheart.”

“Ah, you’re so mean!” Finn pouts, but not a single person in the world would believe him as his voice lowers to a desperate whisper. Seth grinds his pelvis up, grabs Finn's ass again, and when Finn throws his head back, he latches onto his throat with just enough force not to crush or bruise. That kind of thing stopped mattering a long time ago - marks are par for the course in everything they do, and sometimes it's what they _don't_ that lights up like a follow spot everywhere they go.

 _Besides, his hips are just as tender_ , Seth thinks, as he gets to his feet, kissing and kissing and running into furniture.

Finn ends up with his trousers around his knees, bent over the kitchen table as Seth eats him out with more enthusiasm than deliberation, completely unable to continue the tease when faced with _that_ in all its glory, arms hooked around those muscular thighs as Finn grabs onto the far edge for dear life and buries his face in his arm to muffle his screams. When Seth finally comes up for air in a quiet moment, he realizes Finn’s crying and stops dead, carefully tracing the edges of his beloved’s hairline until his breathing slows. His own heart is thundering, scared of how still Finn’s become and the many things that might mean, none of them good that he can think of.

Then he stands up on creaking knees, adjusting his own hard-on through his jeans, wiping his face off and rearranging Finn’s clothes so he won’t get cold. “C’mon, let’s go to bed. You wanna get cleaned up first?”

Finn sniffles. “It’s fine, it’s fine, just really overwhelmed.”

“Tell me about it,” Seth says, gently, and drops to the floor, fuck his joints, fuck his pressure points, he just needs Finn on his lap to comfort them both. “I’ll hold you, you hold me, maybe we’ll both be a little less fucked.”

“It’s good,” Finn insists, dropping soft kisses all over his face. “It’s perfect.”

“Making you cry is perfect?”

“Well, when you’re doing _that,_ yeah. It’s the right kind of hopeless.”

Seth reaches for his glasses so he can study the minute details of Finn’s facial expressions. His eyes are wet, yes, and hooded, but they’re also bright and crinkled and blissed. And in all that context, suddenly the tears become soft, marvelous, the best fucking thing he’s ever seen. He’d thought a thousand times about making Finn come without ever touching his cock, but the image of making him cry out of overstimulation, out of _i did that_ sets a slow smirk building on his lips. He pulls his hair back, and then scoops Finn up into his arms as he stands.

“If that’s what you want, that’s what you get. Tell me that’s what you want.”

Finn tucks his head into Seth’s shoulder, mouthing over the skin there in a way that sends hot shivers through them both. “Can you - can you fuck me, please? Fuck me until I beg you to stop because I can’t handle anymore and then keep going and use whatever’s left?”

Seth grins. “Good pain I can do.” He’s already getting hard again, especially when he sees FInn’s lower lip quiver. He wants this so bad he can barely get the words out, and it’s perfect.

“Yes, yes, fuck yes, go—”

Finn hasn’t bottomed in a little while, and he’s so tense and overexcited that Seth makes the executive decision to keep his dick to himself this time, more than able to drive the man he loves to the brink using only his mouth and his fingers, over and over again. He never backs off, never slacks. By the third time Finn comes, there’s barely a drip left, and he’s crying again, throbbing around Seth’s fingers, gasping through tears that he can’t _take_ it, he just _can’t,_ but he doesn’t say the real words, and Seth slicks up his fingers again and decides he’s going for five.

At five, Finn is an utter wreck, just a mess of sweat and limp muscles, barely able to reach up and tap his slack, open mouth. Seth straddles his chest, and the instant his cock touches Finn’s swollen lips, they both let out a relieved exhale. Despite his exhaustion, Finn is ever enthusiastic, so willing to please, so thrilled to be useful even as he’s puddled into exhaustion, and as foreign as it feels to be on the receiving end of such tenderness, Seth’s not ashamed to admit that he’s slowly getting used to the idea. As flip and cliched as it sounds, that escape is everything - the times when nothing matters except for skin and breath and sweat.

“I love you,” he says, clear as day, reaching down to touch Finn’s face with what feels like hyperbolic tenderness even as he’s fucking his mouth into oblivion. Then he thinks about all the filthy, wonderful things Finn murmurs in his ear in the middle of the night, spooned up and slid in, the threat to fuck Seth until he forgets his own name astonishingly real and prescient. All the things he needs to hear. All the things they both need to hear. “I love you,” he repeats. “Be weak for me. Be greedy. Be soft. It looks so good on you.”

Finn jerks underneath him, tears rolling down from the outside corners of his eyes. He tries to raise his arms, rest his hands on Seth’s thighs, but he’s too fucked to be getting _anything_ up for what feels like maybe the next three to five years. Besides, it feels so wonderful to lie back, his beloved’s heat and weight on his chest because _he’s here he’s here he tastes so good and he’s still here taking what i want so very much to give_ and when Seth grits out his name and collapses, he doesn’t care that he’s too dropped to wipe away the tears and sweat and come. It feels beautiful to be spread so wide, tuned into everything and nothing at once, all focus on the lips and skin and hands around him.

Much, much later that night, they sit down across the kitchen table and, over cups of hot black tea, start to scheme. Seth draws himself a tiny spreadsheet and is weighing the merits of various amenities and wondering if they can find someplace with a dishwasher _and_ a yard. Finn has a list of phone calls to make – turns out he’s got contacts leftover from his NXT days, friends of friends who know a thing or two about unearthly oddities. They keep looking up at each other and grinning like they’re opening birthday presents.

They even get a good night’s sleep, for once.

 

* * *

 

_but i will rise as a stronger i  
than i’ve ever been before_

 

A few weeks later, they round the corner and Seth takes in the familiarity of the area, then bites his lip. “ _Tell_ me this isn’t the voodoo guy.” (He’s pretty sure it’s the voodoo guy.)

"She's a fuckin'... Something else, okay?" Finn shakes his head. "The voodoo guy said it wouldn't work on this anyway."

Seth coughs. "That was a joke!" Last year, while zooming in on a delicious-sounding West Indian restaurant, another local listing appeared down the same block. They had a good laugh about the idea that some dude would genuinely hang out a "voodoo priest" shingle, let alone list himself on Google maps, and that was the end of it, or so he assumed.

He can't believe Finn actually called the guy.

Actually, he totally can.

The porch is neat and clean-swept, the house set back a little ways behind a few small treets. Seth is expecting some sort of gnarled old crone out of a horror movie, and almost falls off the stoop when a young woman opens the door.

"I've got..." Seth sighs, and lets go. "Wait, you look really familiar.”

“I get that a lot,” she grins, shaking her long, silver-streaked hair.

They’re ushered into a small, couch-adorned room, like some cross between a home office and a living room. They’ve barely sat down, not even taken their coats off, when she simply says, “Tell me everything.” There’s a power to those words, mysterious and unstated, and suddenly they’re both spilling at once, pouring over each other’s sentences. Finn takes over, in the end, and his eyes grow low and stern as the story goes on, like it’s harder and harder to pull the closer he gets to the reel. When he finally stops, she steeples her fingers and takes a few steps across the room and back.

"Here's what I can offer," she says, careful and quiet. "I can't force him out. I think you know that. If you don't want him gone, or you can't live without him, I can't protect you. I can protect him." She nods to Seth, who sits bolt upright as if on cue.

"Really?" Finn's voice sounds off, and when Seth steals a glance, he realizes Finn is crying. "That's all I fuckin' want."

She pats his knee. "Give me one day. This time tomorrow, you'll get everything I've got. But my advice? Don’t move in yet. Don’t step in there with the keys until we get this together. Clean slate, yeah? Might get worse before it gets better.”

He nods, tears still rolling down his face, and when Seth reaches for his knee, Finn grabs it like a lifeline.

 

* * *

 

 _you won’t find the devil dancing_  
_around my door_  
_you drowned out his dreadful lies_  
_with the truth in your voice_

 

Finn leaves the house the next day with a paper grocery sack tucked under his arm, and a list of instructions repeating in his head again and again. He meets Seth at the front door of their new apartment, and something already feels off.

“You’re smoking,” Seth mutters, ruffling Finn’s hair to try and disperse the smell. It doesn’t really work, and he wipes his hand on his jeans. “Do you want me to read? You hold the stuff?”

Finn nods, and pulls the neatly folded page from his pocket.

Seth unfolds it, amused by the sweet cursive spirals. “Okay. Sage first. I’ll do that, while you set up whatever’s in there.”

Finn digs in his pocket and hands him something. It’s a worn, positively ancient steel lighter. “’S my da’s. Seems like good luck.”

Seth pulls out his new set of keys, and then pauses. “Wait. What if we piss it off?”

“You just now thought of that?”

“Kinda. ‘Might get worse before it gets better.’ I mean, of course we’re gonna piss it off. But, like, how do we know?”

Finn nods again, slower this time. “If it tells you to stop, don’t.”

“But what if…” _Fuck it,_ Seth thinks, and barrels on. “What if _you_ want me to stop?”

“You wanna safeword the demon, Rollins?”

He shrugs, and turns his face away. “I know. It’s stupid. But I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

 _Again._ The word smashes into Finn’s ribs and it feels like they’re broken. “Write it down.” Seth arches an eyebrow, so he continues. “Write the word down. Put it in your pocket or something. Don’t tell me what it is. Sometimes he knows things.”

Seth does just that before he unlocks the door with a heavy sound. He goes from room to room, carefully re-lighting the bundle with the Zippo every few minutes to make sure he doesn’t miss anything. If nothing else, it smells really good, and he feels his shoulders loosen already.

When he returns to the living room, Finn is crosslegged on the bare floor, surrounded by an assortment of things. Candles, it looks like, in several different colors, but also a small bottle. And a knife. A little one, but it still makes him start. And a square of fabric about the size of his hand.

"What is that?" Seth picks the square up, runs his fingers over it. It feels familiar. It smells familiar.

It's Finn's.

"From my jacket," he offers, slowly removing a series of smaller items from the bag and laying them out on the ground. Small, round, earthen and shiny objects, some in little tins, some with pictures, some with pungent odors. A little spool of gold-yellow thread. “I think that’s everything. What do we do now?” His voice sounds cautiously casual, like he didn’t read the directions six thousand times on the way over.

Seth shifts the paper, and sits down across the neat little demon-picnic they’ve prepared. “Next is… everything has to have a name on it.” His voice cracks, and then comes back a little bit too loud. “Mine goes in the middle.”

Finn reaches for the knife and snaps it open with practiced ease. Seth jumps a little. “Sorry, love.” He grabs one of the candles – a white one – and takes a few expert swipes before turning it to Seth for his inspection.

It’s his stupid Anthrax logo. Seth can barely contain his smirking. “If you fuck this up, I swear to god.”

“It just felt right. Tell me if you want me to fix it.”

Seth says nothing, because it kinda does, so Finn picks the next candle up and goes again. This one’s black, and the carving is almost impossible to read in the dying sunlight – something round and geometric and heavy. A sigil. A name. A calling card. Finn sets that one down a little bit too hard outside of the others. The remaining candles go quickly; names on all kinds of colors – red, purple, pink, blue, orange.

_Victory. Control. Love. Protection. Open roads._

Seth doesn’t know how. He just knows. Just like how he knows to circle the white candles with the colorful ones, a safe distance away from that strangely creepy black sigil.

Finn holds out his hand, and Seth passes him the instructions. Finn gives them a glance, and then rips a neat square off the corner, scribbling that same symbol in the middle and placing it off to the side before handing the remnants back to Seth. “Now what?” His face is patient, and open; it’s clear that this is Seth’s show, to play if he so chooses.

Seth glances down. “It just says, ‘Confession.’ Like, the ‘Forgive me father I have sinned’ type? Because I know approximately fuckall about that.”

“Nah. It just means we gotta tell the truth. Whatever’s on your mind. If we go into this with bullshit, we get bullshit. Something like that.” He starts to tense up. “No judgments, and no secrets. Theoretically I guess we should have a priest, but all we’ve got right now is each other. You go first. I suspect mine’ll be more difficult.” He pauses for only a second before adding, “No matter what happens, I love you.”

Seth looks right back into Finn’s watery, wide blue eyes and says, with no hesitation, “I love you too.” Then he settles back to think. The only thing on his mind for a long time has been this, but that doesn’t come without background noise that readily leaps to the front of the line given the slightest opportunity. _last chance to back out. last chance to admit you can’t do this,_ the sneaky voice offers, trying to sound helpful.

 _oh, fuck you._ “I’m scared shitless this won’t work and one or both of us is gonna get seriously hurt. I’m scared I’m going to have to make the choice between your safety and mine. I feel like a chickenshit asshole sometimes because it feels like you picked the demon over me. I know it’s not that simple, but it feels good to pretend that it is." _all we’ve got right now is each other._

“I’m afraid the only reason we get on is because we’re both broken and I don’t know what will happen if one of us isn’t.” Finn’s words are a gutpunch, nearly doubling Seth over. “I’m afraid that I’m worthless without him, that he’s the only thing I bring. That without him, I’ll end up on the shelf - too weak, too sensitive, too _small_ to stay in our world. I’m afraid that if I told him to leave, something even worse would come i—”

Finn chokes in mid-sentence, and that voice kicks in, swooping through the room in a gust.

**You can't have him, you know.**

Finn pops up on hands and knees and skitters back into the corner, uncannily fast. His movements are jerky and foreign; he almost knocks himself out on the wall. Seth catches his breath and instinctively looks away. But he forces his eyes back, only to see Finn grit his teeth audibly as if to say, _keep going._ Without thinking, he reaches for Finn’s shoulder, and finds his wrist in a grip so inhumanly tight that he’s worried it might crush his bones. He takes a deep breath, then another, and slowly starts to pry Finn’s fingers loose, one at a time, feeling them creak. When they’re finally free, Finn lashes out at his own face, clawing with what’s left of his nails.

**He's mine mine mine.**

_fuck._ Seth grabs the instruction sheet one-handed and flips it open while fumbling with the lighter. Candles, check. His hands shake as he gathers up the small items - a small silver pendant with a flaming sword on it; a small round blue thing that looks like a marble but smells like laundry; a piece of a plant, a root perhaps, that’s shaped like a hand; a few stems of rosemary; another thing with needles that smells somehow both crisp and musty - and places them carefully in the middle of the leather square.

Finn is growling now, a string of saliva rolling loose as his body weaves. He looks like he might lunge out of the corner at any second, muscles trembling with the effort of holding still.

**I will never leave him. You can't keep him the way I can.**

“I don’t fucking _want_ to!” Seth croaks. He’s finally had it. “I don’t give a _shit_ about you. I don’t want to live in his skin and make him have nightmares and make him bleed and hurt people. What kind of sick _fuckup_ would volunteer to take that sweet gig away from you?”

Finn snaps his head at an angle, unnaturally fast.

**I will never leave him. You will, they will, they all have and they all will, but I will never leave him.**

“And maybe one day I’ll fucking _care,”_ Seth snarls. “But he didn’t do this for you. He did it for me, because for some sick reason nobody else will ever understand, he thinks this is worth it.”

Finn recoils, just the slightest bit, and Seth finally begins to understand. “I don’t care about you,” he scowls, lying his ass off a little and not giving a single fuck. “You can stay in there until he’s dead, for all I care. But if you hurt him, or me, or anyone else in one of your little _fucking_ tantrums, I will spend the rest of my life making sure you don’t get to live in anything more self-aware than a goddamn cockroach. _Now_ , back the fuck off and let him talk. Your voice gives me a fucking migraine.”

Abruptly, the voice is sing-song, syrupy-sweet, making Seth sick to his stomach.

**You don’t mean that. You’re only angry, little one, because you want to be me.**

But the voice is unsure and unconvincing, and Seth takes a deep breath, summons every ounce of brat he’s ever had in him, and rolls his eyes at the goddamn demon. “ _Fuck_ you. Go back where you belong.”

The demon weaves drunkenly back and forth, as though the sensation of bones and muscles is still surreal and novel, and a lost, confused look crosses Finn’s face. It’s just enough, just _enough,_ and Seth scrambles across the room, grabs Finn, and kisses him as hard as he can. He realizes he’s counting the seconds, and has no idea why.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven —

 

 _you chased every demon from my guilty heart_  
_they were dragging their claws_  
_on the walls of my veins_  
_tearing me apart_

 

"Jaysus." Finn's staring back now and his _eyes_ are right and his body is looser and he’s _back_ and Seth sits on his heels with a sob, knocking their foreheads together. “Did that just —”

“Talk,” Seth gasps. “I don’t know how long he’s gonna shut up for. Talk.”

So Finn talks, and Seth suddenly grasps the concept of _incantation_ in a way he’s never truly understood before. It’s grim, shot from the hip, but rock solid, spoken with almost painful slowness from the bottom of his diaphragm and imbued with a crackling sense of _low_ like the earth itself has stood up to echo behind him:

"You will not hurt him anymore. You will not hurt me to get at him. You will not hurt our families or loved ones. But especially, you will not hurt him. You are in this body, only because I have invited you, but you are not invited or welcome in this house. Get away from my heart. Stay. The. Fuck. Away.”

He reaches for the torn square of paper, and throws it into the blackness, where it goes up in flames with a crackle loud enough to scare them both. Finn lets out a deep breath. Then he straightens one leg to reach in his pants pocket and pull out a tiny, shiny thing - a gold charm in the shape of a heart. He gathers up the corners of the leather square, and in a few slow, increasingly sure moments, uses the helixed, multicolored thread to twine it shut into a little bag, looping the charm through the last few threads to tie it on tightly.

“Take it,” he orders, holding it out carefully without looking. “Take it, wake it up, and never let me touch it again no matter what.”

 _wake it up._ Seth’s not sure what he expects but is surprised when instinct kicks in and he cups the tiny bag in his palms, breathing on it like lucky dice. After several breaths, he feels it warm briefly in his hands, and then that’s gone as fast as it came, the weight a soothing comfort left behind even as he sticks it in his pocket. There’s a small sizzle as Finn reaches for the water bottle and methodically douses all the candles.

Several minutes pass. There’s not a sound in the room aside from breath.

“Did it work?” Seth finally asks, and the thickness in his voice makes him wonder when he started to cry.

Finn puts a hand over his own heart, and waits a few seconds longer. “Fuck. It’s a lot quieter, that’s for sure.” He crawls over to Seth on all fours like a child, with none of the speed and grace of before, and lays his head down in Seth’s lap. “We’re gonna have to clean all this up.” But his voice is slurring, and Seth bends down to drop a kiss on his ear before leaning back on the floor himself, more than content to sprawl out on the hardwood and pet Finn’s hair until they’re both sleeping dreamlessly. Just for a few minutes.

For the first time in years, he feels calm. His chest doesn’t hurt anymore.

 

 _still hear that devil’s voice sometimes_  
_but it’s growing fainter with every night_  
_and it’s mixing in with the sounds of existence_  
_in its home next to the light_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have. Ahem. Taken some serious liberties regarding conjure and rootwork here, which is not intended to be rude so much as protective - I grew up with this stuff in the air around me, and much like my comments in the previous chapter, it didn't feel right to have it be right, iykwim. (Plus given that my own experiences have been limited to hauntings and hexes, I do not want to in any way present myself as an authority on how this sort of thing would be handled.) I used my own knowledge and consulted a few resources to put together a hand that would be semi-appropriate for this sort of situation, but it's not a "real" recipe. \
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading. You're amazing. 
> 
> ps. I did, however, once live next to a voodoo priest who advertised himself on Google maps, that much is true.


End file.
